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Archive for February 3, 2017

Look at what I found in my pile o’ mail (yay, depressive episodes!) It’s my Internal Affairs letter from the raid that was done on my apartment literally a whole year on this day.

I have gone through a lot this past year with my EEOC situation and the fact it turned into a police raid that really trashed my apartment. Long story short, the officer was found guilty (“sustained”) on committing violations in regards to the raid and pretty much everything around it.

I’m really tired of going through things like this. Seriously, it would be very nice if I or others didn’t have to worry about losing employment for suspicious reasons or being raided for even more fantastical and non-existent reasons. The EEOC process was really arduous and annoying, Internal Affairs surprisingly wasn’t that bad but still taxing. However, all in all, this whole ordeal cost me way more than it should.

Frankly, while some are going to be very supportive and say, “hooray, this is great”, most of this stuff doesn’t feel like an actual success. Like, yes, the EEOC got involved but talk about muted. Yes, Internal Affairs listened to me after all but I could have gone my whole life with out being raided, especially for faulty reasons because of a corrupt detective. I doubt anyone learned anything except for how to hide their bigotry better, no real lessons learned because if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, everyone is very good at evading responsibility and accountability.

What really also hurt was when I really could use help in pulling everything back together and cleaning up my apartment after a cop trashed it was how I felt pretty alone and not really cared about. I asked on my personal social media for help to clean up my place but honestly, I got mainly nothing. Only one person came. Another wanted to as well but were going through cancer treatment so it was understandable they couldn’t come. Now, when I posted the letter on my personal social media, I got an outpouring of support that, frankly, I felt was a year way too late. I didn’t think the post would get so much traction, honestly. The initial news didn’t so I figured this would be the same, next to no response. To be honest, I kind of wish it were. I didn’t expect folks to come from far and wide or if they were going through anything, just local folks I know who generally are able-bodied and are out and about over police violence in general. Newp.

If anything, I didn’t want people to go out in the streets and march, nor bug media on my behalf or anything potentially endangering like that. Just help me shift boxes and lift the ones that were dumped in my cat’s litter box. It isn’t storming the Baltimore City Police headquarter demanding accountability (which is rare to get) but even just an hour of pitching in (or, sitting down and listening while I shifted boxes, which is basically what I made my visiting friend do) would have done some good. I can’t help but to feel irritated and angry from the lack of response when I needed physical help but now everything is over, everyone wants to celebrate.

That raid and literally everything that happened after that was terrifying. Very terrifying. Especially when interacting with a detective that was less concerned with solving a case than just having a Black kid to burn. I actually thought I was gonna die in the back of a police station, the detective was pretty terrifying in how obvious he didn’t care about protocols, rules or rights. The fact that I was well-versed in civil rights law, previously worked in the Library of Congress, knew folks in law enforcement and knew police investigation protocol is what helped me most to walk out the police station breathing. All I wanted next was to help have my apartment cleaned up because hey, I have trauma disorders and there was absolutely no way I would have been able to live in the apartment with it looking like this:

Yeah, I could wait for someone to be free maybe weeks later to perhaps swing by when the spirit moved them with everything like this. Totes. Didn’t kick my disorders, Dissociative Identity Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder into debilitation mode. Yeah, naaaaaaah.

So, it took about nine months (DOJ says Internal Affairs should solve these cases in 90 days) to get this letter. This letter is awfully rare to get, only 8% of complaints lodged against the police get “sustained”.

This was really difficult and I’m still pissed about it for a variety of reasons is, I guess, what I’m trying to say.

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